Books: "Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism," by Kristen R. Ghodsee.

Prague, 1989.

This isn't Kristen R. Ghodsee's first appearance at NA Confidential. See this post from 2017: Women, sex, socialism and Slavenka Drakulić's How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed.

Today's article appeared at Jacobin about a year later, and the topic still fascinates me.

No Scrubs ... an interview, by Meagan Day, with Kristen R. Ghodsee (Jacobin)

In her new book Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, ethnographer Kristen Ghodsee recounts a popular joke that’s told in many East European languages:

In the middle of the night a woman screams and jumps out of bed, eyes filled with terror. Her startled husband watches her rush into the bathroom and open the medicine cabinet. She then dashes to the kitchen and inspects the inside of the refrigerator. Finally she flings open a window and gazes out onto the street below their apartment. She takes a deep breath and returns to bed.

“What’s wrong with you?” her husband says. “What happened?”

“I had a terrible nightmare,” she says. “I dreamed that we had the medicine we needed, that our refrigerator was full of food, and that the streets outside were safe and clean.”

“How is that a nightmare?”

The woman shakes her head and shudders. “I thought the Communists were back in power.”

Hundreds of millions of living Eastern Europeans, including many who abhorred the political reality behind the Iron Curtain, report that their basic standard of living was higher under authoritarian socialism than under contemporary free-market capitalism. Taking a cue from them, Ghodsee’s book starts from the premise that some aspects of life were better under twentieth-century state socialism than they are today, even as others were worse. Appreciating the bad parts doesn’t require ignoring the good parts, her thinking goes. One can acknowledge simultaneously the horrors of the secret police and the comforts of a strong social safety net.

One of the most positive features of state socialism, Ghodsee argues, is that it gave women economic independence from men ...

Suzanne Moore reviewed the book in 2018 at The Guardian.

... This zippy little book argues that not only is unregulated capitalism bad in itself, it is also disproportionately bad for women.

The US academic Kristen Ghodsee has lived in several eastern European countries so she doesn’t wear rose-tinted spectacles, acknowledging that Albania and Romania have always been awful places for women, but she seeks with great brio and nuance to lay out what some socialist states achieved for women.

At heart this is about what happens when women are no longer economically dependent on men and childcare is collectivised ...

Design Justice seeks to dismantle the privilege and power structures that use architecture as a tool of oppression and sees it as an opportunity to envision radically just spaces centered on the liberation of disinherited communities.

Greg Fischer stopped reading after the first paragraph and went back to pretending he actually matters.

Do better than Fischer. Read the entire essay, and think about it.

America’s Cities Were Designed to Oppress, by Bryan Lee Jr. (City Lab)

Architects and planners have an obligation to protect health, safety and welfare through the spaces we design. As the George Floyd protests reveal, we’ve failed.

This moment is heartbreaking. Again. It is emotionally exhausting. Again. It is enraging to watch yet another black body plead not to be executed in public. Again.

There is nothing more representative of the state of and abuse of power in America than the scene that transpired in Washington, D.C. on Monday night: After watching U.S. cities erupt for days with pain and grief in response the police murder of George Floyd, President Donald Trump emerged from his White House bunker to forcibly remove clergy and tear-gas Black Lives Matter protesters — all in order to pose with a Bible in front of D.C.’s St. John’s Church. The Episcopal diocese oversees the 1815 structure and has expressed outrage at the action. It’s important to understand his intentions, as the president did all of this to marshal the physical architectural symbolism of the church to buttress his claims of moral, political, and racial authority. It was an escalation on the highest level, from the highest office.

For nearly every injustice in the world, there is an architecture that has been planned and designed to perpetuate it. That’s a key principle of the Design Justice movement, upon which I base my practice. Design Justice seeks to dismantle the privilege and power structures that use architecture as a tool of oppression and sees it as an opportunity to envision radically just spaces centered on the liberation of disinherited communities ...

"While we inherited a transportation system built on racial discrimination and a belief that moving cars is most important, it does not mean that we can continue with the same type of thinking."

Here's the link, and the title says it all.

Equitable, just and inclusive transportation systems are within our reach, by Veronica O. Davis (Roads & Bridges)

Taking into consideration Team Gahan's ongoing aversion to books and reading, not to mention genuinely purposeful and inclusive communication, I'll highlight the conclusion while noting that the entire article is worth ten minutes of every one's time.

Bringing it all together

As transportation professionals, we are charged with ensuring people are able to move from Point A to Point B safely and reliably. While we inherited a transportation system built on racial discrimination and a belief that moving cars is most important, it does not mean that we can continue with the same type of thinking. Even as we grapple with new technologies such as autonomous vehicles, dockless bike-share systems and scooters, we are susceptible to repeating past mistakes unless we completely shift the paradigm. In point of fact, complete streets and Vision Zero require us to think, act, and design differently.

We must:

• Make bold decisions to reallocate lanes for single-occupancy vehicles to other modes such as public transit, biking and walking.
• Champion complete streets and Vision Zero as a philosophy and a way of doing business so they become more than paper documents.
• Recognize whose voice is not being heard in the process and then being proactive and reach out to those communities. This may include increasing resources to be able to engage the community.
• Create a framework and vision that sets the ground rules for new technologies to serve all communities.
• Increase the number of women and people of color within the profession, so we may reflect the communities we serve.

Following the examples set by our predecessors is not an option. We must shift the paradigm to right historical injustices by designing a network that is inclusive of all people as we prepare for the future.

Evan Stoner previews the advent of Southern Indiana Pride.

Evan's essay begins with an appropriate history lesson before seguing to the launch of Southern Indiana Pride. It appears that Southern Indiana Pride will be a successor of sorts to a previous group, now defunct. 

UPDATE: Southern Indiana Equality is no more.

At times it takes time, and the time seems right ... right now.

Launching Southern Indiana Pride, by Evan Stoner at Medium

... Hyper-partisanship and division plagues the current state of U.S. national discourse. I strongly believe that re-discovering American unity rests squarely on the shoulders of my generation. Since 2016, Jeffersonville Pride has refused to pour gasoline on a partisan wildfire. Our organization has consistently invited leaders who represent opposing political views to speak at Jeffersonville Pride and have welcomed support from Democratic and Republican leaders. Why? Because supporting LGBT civil rights transcends political partisanship. In these starkly divided times, our organization has been a strong voice of unity. We are proud of this identity, and we are proud to announce an upcoming event that will truly reflect our commitment to building bridges of unity throughout our hometown.

In early October, a brand new organization will launch. Southern Indiana Pride will harness the support and enthusiasm of Southern Indiana creators, educators, business leaders, and world-changers from across our region to work towards advancing LGBT inclusion and equality in Southern Indiana. Southern Indiana Pride will take Jeffersonville Pride’s place as the new host of the annual PRIDE parade and festival in Southern Indiana. Southern Indiana Pride is slated to take place summer 2019 in Jeffersonville.

The official launch of Southern Indiana Pride will take place at 7PM on National Coming Out Day, October 11th, 2018 at 300 Spring St. in downtown Jeffersonville! ...

Five ways that capitalism subverts freedom and democracy.

One of Jim Bouton's most enduring Ball Four anecdotes has to do with a Seattle Pilots teammate who had a particularly vehement spat with the umpire behind home plate. Weeks passed, stars aligned, and this hitter again came to bat, with the same umpire calling balls and strikes.

The first pitch was ridiculously far outside, and the umpire decisively called it a strike. Bouton's teammate stepped out of the box, but said nothing. The next pitch was two feet high, and the batter somehow tommy-hawked it off the outfield wall for a double.

The umpire turned to the Pilots bench and said, "See? It makes him a better hitter."

In like fashion, reading this essay is sure to make you a better capitalist. We can chat about it over a beer, but I'm not wasting my time on anti-social media (except to denounce chain restaurants).

But at Least Capitalism Is Free and Democratic, Right?, by Erik Olin Wright (Jacobin)

It might seem that way, but genuine freedom and democracy aren't compatible with capitalism.

In the United States, many take for granted that freedom and democracy are inextricably connected with capitalism. Milton Friedman, in his book Capitalism and Freedom, went so far as to argue that capitalism was a necessary condition for both.

It is certainly true that the appearance and spread of capitalism brought with it a tremendous expansion of individual freedoms and, eventually, popular struggles for more democratic forms of political organization. The claim that capitalism fundamentally obstructs both freedom and democracy will then sound strange to many.

To say that capitalism restricts the flourishing of these values is not to argue that capitalism has run counter to freedom and democracy in every instance. Rather, through the functioning of its most basic processes, capitalism generates severe deficits of both freedom and democracy that it can never remedy. Capitalism has promoted the emergence of certain limited forms of freedom and democracy, but it imposes a low ceiling on their further realization.

At the core of these values is self-determination: the belief that people should be able to decide the conditions of their own lives to the fullest extent possible ...

The five ways follow. To read the explanation, you'll need to click through.

1 “Work or starve” isn’t freedom.
2 Capitalists decide.
3 Nine to five is tyranny.
4 Governments have to serve the interests of private capitalists.
5 Elites control the political system.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: In Havel, I trust.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: In Havel, I trust.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

I'm not ill, but I need a personal day. Two Food & Dining column deadlines are approaching, and 1,001 minor tasks keep nipping at my writing time, so it's rerun week at OTA. 

This column originally was published on May 7, 2015. It came to mind recently when I watched a video about the Solidarity trade union movement in Poland. 

In the video, a recent interview with Lech Wałęsa (he's now 74) was juxtaposed with archival footage and views of the Lenin Shipyard today. The latter are sad, given that the once sprawling birthplace of Solidarity has been reduced to almost nothing -- Jeff Boat puns are not intended -- and Poland itself currently is gripped by a reactionary sociopolitical phase. 

Looking back, the devoutly Roman Catholic ex-president Wałęsa is convinced that God placed him on earth for one purpose, and one alone: to topple the Communist regime in Poland. He is proud to have accomplished this mission, and as for what came afterward (read: an unsuccessful political career), well, it can be discussed some other time. 

My first reaction was to compare these thoughts with the career of Ulysses S. Grant, a man who possessed the ideal qualities to win the Civil War, but not to navigate the political realities of the Oval Office. 

Then the post-Communist experiences of Havel seemed a better analogy. Coming from very different backgrounds (Wałęsa was an electrician and Havel an intellectual), they shared an ability to resist authoritarianism, though not to be effective national leaders amid the scrum of new beginnings. 

As a polemicist, I may resemble that remark. It might even be a tad too close for comfort. Then again, the ruling clique has yet to be overthrown. Shall we check back in November of 2019?

---

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.
-- Vaclav Havel

Considering that the late Vaclav Havel is a longtime personal hero, it shouldn’t come as a surprise for you to learn I have been profoundly moved in the aftermath of reading Havel: A Life, a biography of the Czech playwright, dissident and president, written by Michael Zantovsky.

Zantovsky was a personal friend and sometimes confidant of Havel, but the book cannot be classified as hagiography. It’s a “warts and all” sketch of a man’s exceedingly complicated inner world and public persona. More than half of Havel’s life was lived during his country’s Communist period – and much of that time he was a marked man and presumed “enemy” of the state. Then, in a supreme irony, he served multiple terms as president.

This largely symbolic post seems to have strained Havel’s abilities as much or more than surviving outlaw status in a dictatorship.

Born during the interwar period when Czechoslovakia seemed to be emerging as a model for capitalist democracy, Havel was a child of privilege, and as such, his economic class rendered him a societal pariah when the workers’ paradise was forcibly installed after 1948. He was made to feel that he didn’t “fit,” and while capable of addressing the dichotomy intellectually, there were lifelong feelings of guilt.

Still, Havel assuaged them in various ways, and managed to find a foothold. Excluded from university owing to his origins, he served a hitch in the military and then became a stagehand, ushering him into Prague’s theatrical milieu precisely at a point where the usual governmental restrictions on free expression were softened just enough for him to begin writing slyly subversive and anarchic plays (the “theater of the absurd”), and making a name for himself – not just inside Czechoslovakia, but in Western Europe, which became of inestimable importance later, when he most needed the money and contacts.

All the while, Havel cultivated a wide range of friendships in the intelligentsia, including rebels, misfits, scholars and even the stray apparatchik. In 1968 came the Prague Spring, a thawing which held hope that there might be “socialism with a human face” in Czechoslovakia. Leonid Brezhnev thought otherwise, and for the next two decades, the country became mired in a debilitating process derisively known as normalization.

Consumer production was increased even as the fundamental deficiencies of a primitively industrialized economy, one chained to the Soviet Union, went unaddressed. Free thought was suppressed. The inevitable result was stagnation and despair, addressed through sausages, beer and maybe a yearly holiday on the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria. One could live, albeit without thinking.

Havel the star playwright now became Havel, the acknowledged leader of the opposition. He was harassed and frequently imprisoned, and yet managed to formulate a doctrine of principled dissent, focusing on matters of conscience and consciousness, which he perceived as vital at a fundamentally human level.

Examining society’s daily psychological assumptions, Havel theorized that Communism was a trauma primarily virulent at the grassroots core of Czechoslovak society, despoiling the very nature of daily interaction between friends, lovers, neighbors and co-workers.

Persistent indoctrination in the ideology of class warfare turned all human relationships inside out, and the cynicism of everyday reality, as it operated far apart from the panaceas of official propaganda, subverted all aspects of trust, caring and hope.

---

Havel offered a consistent, firm, but gentle remonstrance: “Civil society” would have to be redefined and rebuilt virtually from the ground up. It was a gently scolding and passive resistance, carefully calculated to avoid open conflict, and subsequently it was assisted immeasurably by one of those historical quirks that seem irrelevant at the time, in 1975, as buried within a non-binding international conference called the Helsinki Accords.

According to the Cold War scholar John Lewis Gaddis in his book "The Cold War: A New History" (2005), "Leonid Brezhnev had looked forward, Anatoly Dobrynin recalls, to the 'publicity he would gain... when the Soviet public learned of the final settlement of the postwar boundaries for which they had sacrificed so much'... '[Instead, the Helsinki Accords] gradually became a manifesto of the dissident and liberal movement'... What this meant was that the people who lived under these systems — at least the more courageous — could claim official permission to say what they thought."

To summarize, the Warsaw Pact, led by the Soviet Union, desperately desired the recognition of borders reshaped by World War II, and a seemingly insignificant appendage to the Helsinki Accords pertaining to human rights and freedoms was tolerated as a mere talking point for Western campaigners.

In fact, in a strange and perhaps legalistic way, the Czechoslovak government (and other Warsaw Pact nations) provided moral legitimacy to internal opposition by signing the Helsinki Accords. Granted, it did not mean opponents would avoid persecution, but in 1977, Havel and a small band of courageous dissidents wrote a document known as Charter 77, and then undertook the informal organization of a civic initiative known by the same name.

Charter 77 was hounded mercilessly by the Communist regime. Still, the very fact that Czechoslovakia had accepted human rights responsibilities intensified human rights scrutiny outside the Soviet zone, and ensured continued publicity for the opposition, which could be weakened, although not squelched entirely.

During the 1980s, as Communism’s intrinsic structural flaws began afflicting the entire Bloc, Mikhail Gorbachev realized that the USSR would have to divest itself of economically draining responsibilities to Eastern Europe to survive (of course even then, it didn’t). Without the formerly perpetual Soviet guarantee of support, Czechoslovaka’s regime lapsed into a state of terminal illness.

In 1989, when push came to largely peaceful shove, the government collapsed in what is now known as the Velvet Revolution. Just eight months following his final incarceration, Havel became president of the country, embarking on a period of recovery still ongoing, more than three years following Havel’s death – or as the post-Communist adage puts it: “It’s easier to make fish soup out of the aquarium than the other way around.”

New Albany resembles that remark, doesn’t it?

---

Whenver I think about New Albany’s “battered city” syndrome, as our friend Gina always referred to it, Havel’s wide-ranging thoughts on the nature of a civil society come to mind.

Admittedly, 25 years later, it remains unclear what effect Havel’s thoughtfully humanistic leadership had on the course of affairs in his homeland, except that sometimes, it really isn’t whether you win or lose in the traditional all-or-nothing sense. Rather, it’s how you characterize the game, and he excelled at that.

In good times or bad, New Albany’s Battered City Syndrome is still on display, as manifested by secrecy, mistrust, inertia and contempt, especially on the part of those who regard any sign of communication and cooperation with others as a sign of weakness, which provides succor to the cultural or political enemy of the moment.

From the subsequent vacuum oozes the lowest-common-denominator politics of fear-mongering. Once not so long ago, during a heated council debate, the spluttering 1st district councilman Dan Coffey inadvertently revealed the obstructionist’s most detested target: “Them people.” In reality, “them people” want a livable city just as much as “his” people do, but this alone doesn’t scratch the ward-heeler’s itch. A truly civilized, functional city has no need for Dan Coffey, and he knows it.

Havel provides the answer: We must remove ourselves from the cycle of blame and vituperation, and get on with the process of building a civil society – a civil city – with a sustainable, inter-related foundation that prefaces future progress.

Who among us wishes to abandon his or her laboriously crafted straw man first, and get on with the task of reconstituting New Albany’s lost civility?

Let’s talk.

Meanwhile, I heartily recommend Zantovsky’s biography. Ultimately, much went wrong for Havel following the Velvet Revolution, although the author notes that Havel remained invariably courteous and polite, even when dealing with his oppressors, whether Communist or parliamentarian.

I’ll have to work on this.

---

Recent columns:

April 5: ON THE AVENUES: New Albany's downtown food and dining scene is solid ... for now.

March 29: ON THE AVENUES: Al Knable doesn’t lie, but the local Democratic Party is a flood-plain Pinocchio. Let’s censure it at the ballot box.

March 22: ON THE AVENUES: Remembering Max Allen, bartender extraordinaire.

March 15: ON THE AVENUES: The books I've been reading during the winter months.

UPDATE: A Human Rights Commission would come in handy given the public housing putsch, but the same lawyer who wrote the belly-up human rights ordinance now sits on the public housing board. Now that's New Gahania.

Stan Robison's that lawyer, sans
pink slip from Glorious Leader.

It has been almost nine months since New Albany's Human Rights Commission made a feeble blip on the city's radar screen.

---

(January 19, 2017)

Gee, CM Phipps, we're mystified as to why the New Albany Human Rights Commission is moribund.

During the appointments phase of this evening's city council meeting, President Pat McLaughlin (4th District) asked Greg Phipps (3rd District) about the council appointments status of the Human Rights Commission.

According to the ordinance, council and mayor each appoint members to the HRC, and then the four pick the fifth.

Phipps waved him off, briefly indicating that the HRC seems dead, with no meetings for the past 18 months and no apparent interest. McLaughlin was more than happy to move to the next commission, and that's all we know. It isn't much.

I won't go into the lengthy and exceedingly futile history of the HRC's most recent incarnation, though almost exactly five years ago, we thanked Phipps for taking an interest.

Kudos to CM Phipps for making the Human Rights Commission's revival a priority.

Subsequently, perhaps no other single topic better illustrates the doctrine of Civic Gahanism than the history of our reconstituted Human Rights Commission:

Fundamental change is imperative, so long as nothing fundamentally changes.

Here's a short summary from 2015.

It was never Jeff Gahan's idea to enable a human rights commission, but in the grand scheme of political maneuvering, there was sufficient support that he acquiesced, pausing only to be assured that he'd receive credit for the sham he at first opposed, and would extract payback chits from those duly assuaged, redeemable for bonded boondoggles down the road.

Consequently, New Albany was gifted with vintage Gahan intellectual infrastructure: An entity neutered and defanged at birth, suitable primarily for posturing and press releases. The sycophants were delighted, and so little of merit occurred (for once, actually by design) that a whole other entity (Southern Indiana Equality) was privately created.

If you can find anything in this story to suggest a vote to re-elect Jeff Gahan, please let me know. While you're pondering this, consider yet again the "human rights mayor's" abysmal record in matters such as ... well, human rights.

Also from 2015:

Often in these pages, we advocate the notion of progress by design, and since 2012, New Albany has possessed a reconstituted Human Rights Commission. Since it was formed again and duly stocked with appointees, it has had very little to do, not because New Albany is a fundamentally functional utopia of tolerance and good sense, but because City Hall's evident design for the HRC has been that it remain unused -- reserved for show and public relations pronouncements, while kept hermetically sealed and out of controversy's way.

This has disgusted me from day one, and continues to do so. It implies that "quality of life" derives solely from capital intensive building projects, and has nothing to do with fundamental human dignity. It is both cynical and cowardly to first enable a Human Rights Commission, then render it caged and impotent.

My most recent reprinting of the following column on the topic of the Human Rights Commission was on March 21, 2011. The column itself was written in 2009. Ironically, as I read the final paragraphs, there is considerable irony. We certainly did determine that the members of New Albany's political class could vote "for" something.

Unfortunately, they seem to be content with form over content. This needs to change.

The HRC was reformed, then immediately stripped of working parts and left to rest atop blocks in City Hall's dustiest file cabinet. This was fine with the mayor, who never wanted it to be viable, anyway, and was perfectly content to accept the plaudits for a commitment to human rights that he doesn't possess in any discernible way, shape or form.

If Gahan, a self-described Democrat, did in fact possess such a commitment to human rights, chances are he wouldn't be telling people that the best solution to the housing "project" is to demolish it and ship housing authority residents to the county somewhere, perhaps in tent camps, as though he were speaking of toxic waste or cordwood and not human beings.

But in the end, the saddest cut of all is that Phipps, who has danced the limbo to Adam Dickey's increasingly discordant Democratic tune, went along with this shell game from the very start, garnering his own participation trophies and gold stars, and accepting a non-functional Potemkin facade of an institution as quid pro quo for rubber-stamping every one of Gahan's TIF bond and "quality of life" over-expenditures that crossed his desk.

It's a damned shame.

Gahan's done nothing for Phipps. Neither has the Democratic Party. Perhaps independence is the only true way for a New Albanian to preserve even a semblance of integrity amid the chicanery, dullness and corruption taken for granted by the big fish here in this tiny bird feeder of a town.

---

Let's summarize the current situation.

The revised, updated and currently moribund human rights ordinance was the work of the city's non-corporate attorney at the time, Stan Robison, who based it on an existing ordinance in Bloomington.

The commission formed to oversee the ordinance -- to educate and hear cases stemming from complaints about violations -- was emasculated from the start via a handy mechanism for all potential activity being shunted first to one or the other city attorneys.

The HRC was built for show, and in truth, it was unable to achieve even this in spite of the efforts of well-meaning commission members like Brad Bell, who saw the rot almost from the start and jumped a hamstrung ship to try his hand at an autonomous organization called Southern Indiana Equality -- which lasted two years and recently was disbanded.

In 2017 Robison, the architect of the subsequently neutered human rights ordinance, was appointed to the public housing board when Jeff Gahan packed it with bootlickers and sycophants willing and eager to implement the mayor's annexation of public housing properties for future luxury, and the necessary expulsion of hundreds of residents in the absence of a viable plan to shelter them.

When asked about the public housing putsch, Phipps the human rights campaigner has replied (in effect) that is no business of his.

Phipps' purportedly "Democratic" party has watched the human rights commission crash and burn, supports Gahan's public housing incursion, and continues to exist in an Adam Disneyesque netherworld of hypocrisy, wherein it is encouraged to criticize a Republican mayor in Charlestown for doing what a Democratic mayor in New Albany is doing even when the party's two best hopes for 9th district Congress surely know better.

The Putsch Man Cometh: Jeff Gahan waxes delusional about being a public housing "advocate," then cheerfully explains why he should be summarily deposed in 2019.

Welcome to Jeff Gahan's perfect Come to City: Human rights ordinances aren't worth the digital ink it takes to spell the word "deleted," while David Duggins, Stan Robison and Bob Norwood are in control of peoples' lives.

I'll stick with this meme from my 2015 campaign.

UPDATE: Southern Indiana Equality is no more.

R.I.P., S.I.E.

We received a question from a regular reader.

How do I get in touch with Southern Indiana Equality? Their web site and Facebook page are gone. Do they still exist?

The answer is no.

According to SIE president Brad Bell, "We disbanded right after Jeff Pride. Too many other groups sprouted up doing primarily the same thing, plus we (SIE) never got good traction to get moving in the right direction."

Southern Indiana Equality began in 2015, in part as a response to the city's "built to be docile" Human Rights Commission.

More here:

UPDATE: A Human Rights Commission would come in handy given the public housing putsch, but the same lawyer who wrote the belly-up human rights ordinance now sits on the public housing board. Now that's New Gahania.

Shame on the farm in Sicily: "We are talking about potentially thousands of Romanian women as victims of serious abuse."

We visited Sicily for the first time last November, spending a week of contentment in the city of Catania on the island's eastern shore, with Mt. Etna a constant, fascinating presence.

While an active volcano poses a certain threat to human civilization, the rich volcanic soil it produces is an unqualified boon. There is a lot of growing going on.

As part of a volcano tour, we visited a vineyard and a honey vendor; moreover, much of our time in Catania was spent dining. We ate one fantastic meal after another, with an alarming weight gain mirroring time spent at the table.

In short, while we traveled nowhere near Ragusa province, Sicily's agricultural bounty was ever-present during our stay. If I'm to praise it, I'm also obliged to participate in shining a light on its dark underbelly.

Hence this article. The exploitation is sickening, and beyond the plain fact of it being inexcusable under any circumstances, that EU policies apparently promote one member nation importing members from another in this fashion is inexplicable.

Like slavery in America. We should know by now that the cost of our food supply often far exceeds the price we pay at the supermarket. Even so, the situation in Ragusa province is profoundly disturbing.

Raped, beaten, exploited: the 21st-century slavery propping up Sicilian farming, by Lorenzo Tondo and Annie Kelly (The Guardian)

Thousands of female Romanian farm workers are suffering horrendous abuse


 ... “When I came here I thought I was coming to a hard but decent job in another European country, but we ended up as slaves,” she says.

Hidden among fields of flapping white plastic tents across Ragusa province, 5,000 Romanian women like Bolos are working as seasonal agricultural workers. Their treatment is a growing human rights scandal, being perpetrated with almost complete impunity.

The legacy of James Baldwin.

The article isn't about the video, but I'd advise watching the video.

The fire this time – the legacy of James Baldwin, by Lanre Bakare (The Guardian)

His work fell foul of civil-rights-era binary racial and sexual politics but, as a new film shows, now Baldwin’s ideas are used to explain everything from Trump to Black Lives Matter

 ... For Baldwin scholar, professor of English at Yale and author Caryl Phillips, the return of Baldwin to mainstream thinking isn’t surprising at all. For him the big issues concerning American life now – the rise of crude, racially charged politics, killings of unarmed black men by the police, an apathetic public – repeat a history from which Baldwin’s critiques still offer some solace. “People are looking for someone who can articulate these issues,” says Phillips. “I think the person who has probably articulated what it means to be an American and what it means to be black, with more eloquence than anybody else in the last century, is Baldwin.”

The Confidentials support the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and encourage you to check into it.

Now more than ever, we must do what we can to support bastions of free thought.

I plan on doing this by means of heightened financial support for principled journalism (The Nation, CounterPunch) and advocacy (ACLU, Planned Parenthood), and of course the Freedom from Religion Foundation falls into this grouping.

There'll be others, but for now, given that New Albany's perennially inappropriate Mayor's Prayer Breakfast is tomorrow, let's begin with the FFRF. Below is the organization's e-mail newsletter, which speaks for itself.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational charity, is the nation's largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics), and has been working since 1978 to keep religion and government separate.

---

Continuing to fight for our country

Not surprisingly, the elections were our focus this week here at the Freedom From Religion Foundation. But we didn't let that monopolize our attention.

We did a lot of work around voting issues in the run-up to the balloting, and we continued that until the eve of the elections. On Monday, we warned everyone about electioneering by churches around the country in violation of their nonprofit status. We educated the public and the media about what is and isn't permissible as a tax-exempt organization and highlighted some recent egregious infringements.

Then, on Tuesday the elections happened, and we grappled with the results.

"The Freedom From Religion Foundation is not a partisan office or group. But we are realists," our Co-Presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor said. "Those who care about the separation between religion and government, as well as religion's continuing grip on social policy in the United States, must be cognizant that Nov. 8 was a game-changer — and not a positive one for our essential work to buttress the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment."

(It must be pointed out that we did get some victories on state-church battles that we were intensely involved in: A Colorado death-with-dignity measure passed, and an Oklahoma referendum to put a Ten Commandments plaque back in the statehouse was defeated.)

FFRF Staff Attorney Andrew Seidel had poetic insights to offer on the consequences of the elections:

"Dark and difficult times may lie ahead, but know this:

We are going to fight like hell.
We are going to fight like hell to defend the wall of separation.
We are going to fight like hell to protect the First Amendment.
FFRF is going to fight like hell, for you."

Andrew wrote a pointed blog on Ben Carson possibly becoming our next Secretary of Education. "One name reveals why the Freedom From Religion Foundation will be essential in a Trump-governed United States: Dr. Ben Carson," Andrew wrote. He went on to describe the shocking views that Carson holds. "FFRF is going to keep our schools secular. We are going to defend the Wall of Separation. We hope you'll join us," he concluded.

A Georgia victory!

Andrew also provided us with some solace this week. A Georgia school district scrapped plans for a proposed bible class partnership with a local Christian group after Andrew complained on FFRF's behalf. There were some shocking happenings in the district, including the intense harassment of a non-Christian student, and FFRF hopefully mitigated some of that, too. (Keep a look out for other victories next week.)

Commemorating Veterans Day

We had a comforting Veterans Day commemoration Friday at our office in downtown Madison, attended by a number of veterans and other members. It started at the "Atheists in Foxholes" monument at our Rose Zerwick Memorial Garden and Courtyard with short speeches by Dan and Annie Laurie and a special photo-op for veterans at the monument. It then moved to our capacious auditorium for refreshments. To honor veterans, we also took out an ad in a special edition of USA Today. "You've been fighting for our secular Constitution and our freedom — let us fight for you," it said and featured a photo of World War II veteran and FFRF Board Member Joe Cunningham in front of the "Atheists in Foxholes" monument.

Madison radio station pulls our show

Alas, on Friday, we received a bit of insulting news: Our local station is cancelling our "Freethought Radio" show because the station is radically changing its format from talk radio to all-Christmas music! Don't worry. Our show is very much alive. We're still on in a number of other cities. And you can always listen to our podcast. This week's show talks about the elections as it relates to the direction of the Supreme Court, plays a defiant version of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" by Sharon Jones, reports recent FFRF legal victories, and includes an interview with a former nun who is now a none (as in no religion) and has a new book about the experience. We're looking for a replacement station in Madison, treating the cancellation as an opportunity rather than a disruption.

Whether it was our elections work, our special commemorations, our radio show or our legal victories, we were able to accomplish a lot, and all of it because of your support.

Cordially,

Amit Pal
Director of Communications
Freedom From Religion Foundation

On being a woman in Iceland.

Not an Aunt Tammy here ... photo credit: The Nation.

Rewinding to a time when it had been only 30 years since the Cubs played in the World Series:

... What made Iceland’s day of protest on 24 October 1975 so effective was the number of women who participated. It was not just the impact of 25,000 women – which, at the time, was a fifth of the female population – that gathered on the streets of Reykjavik, but the 90% of Iceland’s female population who went on all-out professional and domestic strike. Teachers, nurses, office workers, housewives put down tools and didn’t go to work, provide childcare or even cook in their kitchens. All to prove how indispensable they were.

Brilliant.

Why Iceland is the best place in the world to be a woman, by Noreena Hertz (The Guardian)

Since 1975, the Nordic country has blazed the trail in gender equality and now, from infancy to maternity, women and girls enjoy a progressive lifestyle. But how did they achieve it?

Rebekka is so tiny that, even on her tiptoes, arms aloft, she cannot reach. So her teacher lifts her up to the unvarnished wooden monkey bar. “One, two, three,” her classmates count. She hangs on, determinedly. When she reaches 10, she jumps to the ground. “I am strong,” she shouts proudly.

It’s an ordinary morning for this single-sex class of three-year-olds at Laufásborg nursery school in Reykjavik. No dolls or cup-cake decorating on the lesson plan here. Instead, as Margrét Pála Ólafsdóttir, the school’s founder, tells me: “We are training [our girls] to use their voice. We are training them in physical strength. We are training them in courage.”

It’s a fascinating approach to education. And a popular one. In a country of only 330,000 people, there are 19 such primary and nursery schools, empowering girls from an early age.

Airbnb pushes back: "Bias and discrimination have no place on Airbnb, and we have zero tolerance for them."

On our recently concluded vacation, we spent six nights at two Airbnb properties, one in Vermont and the other in Massachusetts. Both of them were excellent.

I was aware of Airbnb's recent bad publicity with regard to discrimination, perhaps summarized by this paragraph from a New York Times story in June.

The long-simmering issue was inflamed last month when an Airbnb host in North Carolina made hateful, racist posts in canceling a booking by a black guest.

On the day we returned from the trip, the following e-mail appeared in my inbox.  Airbnb's CEO explains what's to be done about it. The full report is here (pdf).

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Dear Airbnb community,

At the heart of our mission is the idea that people are fundamentally good and every community is a place where you can belong. We don’t say this because it sounds nice. It’s the goal that everyone at Airbnb works towards every day – because we’ve all seen how when we live together, we better understand each other.

Discrimination is the opposite of belonging, and its existence on our platform jeopardizes this core mission. Bias and discrimination have no place on Airbnb, and we have zero tolerance for them. Unfortunately, we have been slow to address these problems, and for this I am sorry. I take responsibility for any pain or frustration this has caused members of our community. We will not only make this right; we will work to set an example that other companies can follow.

In June, we asked Laura Murphy, the former head of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington D.C. Legislative Office, to review every aspect of the Airbnb platform, and to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to fight bias and discrimination. Thanks to Laura’s leadership, today we’re releasing a report that outlines the results of that process. You can read the full report here, but I’d like to highlight four changes that will impact the way our platform works:

Airbnb Community Commitment

Beginning November 1, everyone who uses Airbnb must agree to a stronger, more detailed nondiscrimination policy. We aren’t just asking you to check a box associated with a long legal document. We’re asking everyone to agree to something we’re calling the Airbnb Community Commitment, which says:

We believe that no matter who you are, where you are from, or where you travel, you should be able to belong in the Airbnb community. By joining this community, you commit to treat all fellow members of this community, regardless of race, religion, national origin, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or age, with respect, and without judgment or bias.

Open Doors

We’ll be implementing a new policy called Open Doors. Starting October 1st, if a Guest anywhere in the world feels like they have been discriminated against in violation of our policy – in trying to book a listing, having a booking canceled, or in any other interaction with a host – we will find that Guest a similar place to stay if one is available on Airbnb, or if not, we will find them an alternative accommodation elsewhere. This program will also apply retroactively to any Guest who reported discrimination prior to today. All of these Guests will be offered booking assistance for their next trip.

Instant Book

We’ll increase the availability of Instant Book, which allows our hosts to offer their homes to be booked immediately without their prior approval of a specific guest. Instant Book makes booking easier for everyone, and our goal is to have 1 million listings bookable via Instant Book by January 1st, 2017.

Anti-bias training

We are working with experts on bias, including Dr. Robert Livingston of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Dr. Peter Glick of Lawrence University, to make anti-bias training available to our community, and will be publicly acknowledging those who complete it.

These steps are just the beginning, not the end, of our efforts to combat bias and discrimination.

While we as a company have been slow on this issue, I am now asking you the community to help us lead the way forward. Every time you make someone else feel like they belong, that person feels accepted and safe to be themselves. While this may sound like a small act of kindness, we are a community of millions of people strong. Imagine what we can do together.

Brian Chesky
CEO, Co-founder

Family planning: the unsung human right.

International Planned Parenthood Federation

Then there is this.

Pro-choice activists have delivered abortion pills to women in Northern Ireland using a drone. The stunt aimed to highlight the strict laws around terminations on both sides of the Irish border.

It is the impetus for an editorial.

EDITORIAL: the Guardian view on family planning: the unsung human right 

Millions of women are barred either by cultural taboo, cost or availability from being able to decide for themselves when they have children. Empowering them to take control should be a basic objective of every human health project.

The council's DemoDisneyDixiecrats: Co-option comes right after self-interest, and just before irrelevance.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana lists the rights below under the all-purpose umbrella of "equality." They're merely an opening salvo, not a detailed rendering.

It seems to me that if one must "belong" to one (or more) of these groupings in order to feel solidarity with them, and consequently to take action on their behalf, prospects are daunting indeed for ultimate success in their advocacy.

On Thursday, the only openly gay member of New Albany's city council offered a non-binding resolution expressing solidarity with the city of Orlando in the wake of the horrible massacre there. The resolution noted support of universal LGBT rights and repudiated violence. It was impeccable, and all eight council representatives in attendance concurred.

Yet, there is something nagging about this. While it is perfectly fitting and proper that councilman Greg Phipps represents the conscience of the LGBT community in his job as member of the body, if representation derives only from identity, then the body is not at all representative.

Look at the list below. There are no women, immigrants or racial minorities on the city council. Only one councilman is south of 45 years of age. None are disabled. Our council is composed of nine white males with an average age of around 60.

At Thursday's meeting, Dan Coffey ventured the view that perhaps there should be a council resolution on behalf of all those who've suffered from violence, irrespective of identifier or subheading, and he was right (though probably for the wrong reasons).

However, what is needed even more than another omnibus, non-binding resolution is some coherent notion of how the city's executive body can be part of the solution when it comes to all these human rights issues raised by the ACLU -- and don't even bother mentioning the city's Human Rights Commission, which was built to be moribund.

At the moment, this idea seems more likely to emanate from council's three Republicans and two Independents rather than its remaining four Democrats, who surely find themselves tied to a governing political party script that defines quid pro quo in exacting detail.

I'd suggest that they closely examine the "quid" before accepting the terms of the "pro quo," because co-option comes right after self-interest, and just before irrelevance.

As much as we'd all like to wave a magic wand and produce a society of love, not hate, the chances are slim. All we can do is to keep on keeping on. At the same time, municipal government can help achieve substantive progress in these human rights areas, if only incremental, but the legislative body cannot do so by deferring to the carpenters of stage scenery in the back corridors of City Hall.

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EQUALITY
"All men are created equal." While it is a simple concept, it is one that can be especially hard to put into practice. The course of American history has been paved by movements for equality — civil rights, women's rights, and most recently, LGBT rights. The ACLU of Indiana has been there to fight for them all.

Disability Rights
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) prohibits discrimination and ensures equal opportunity for persons with disabilities in employment, state and local government services, public accommodations, commercial facilities, and transportation.

Immigrants' Rights
Under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the rights of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.

LGBT Rights
Religious freedom is fundamentally important; that's why it's already protected in our state and federal Constitutions. But that doesn't give any of us the right to discriminate against others. We must ensure that hardworking gay and transgender people are not denied a job, evicted from their apartment, or refused service by a business just because of who they are.

Women's Rights
The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says: "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall ...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Youth Rights
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides for equal application of the laws, prohibiting states from denying any person the equal protection of its laws.

Racial Justice
The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana mounts epic struggles to ensure everyone in America gets to enjoy the rights, freedoms and liberties that the Constitution guarantees. Since our formation, we have been involved in all aspects of the struggle for racial justice across the United States.

The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, cultural policies, and the inevitability of dogs playing poker.

File under: "Not Here, Jack."

The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture is not a government agency, but an act of collective imagination fueled by all who believe that art and culture are among our most powerful and under-tapped resources for creating a more just, equitable, and vibrant world.

Specifically ...

USA: MIA (AGAIN) ON CULTURAL RIGHTS AND CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT, by Arlene Goldbard

Ed Carroll, a friend in Europe, sent me a query: “How come there was not one mayor in the USA that was prompted to submit an application to the Agenda 21 for culture? … The absence on the Map is quite extraordinary.”

My reply? “What a good question!”

“The map” is a graphic on the international award page for cities and regional and local governments that have adopted cultural policies “linking the values of culture (heritage, diversity, creativity and transmission of knowledge) with democratic governance, citizen participation and sustainable development.”

This time around, 83 cities and local governments submitted proposals. As you will see when you click on the map, not a single one came from the United States.

A discussion then broke out at Fb.

Roger A. Baylor
"Democratic governance, citizen participation and sustainable development” turn out to be such big sticking points.

Jeff Gillenwater
Yeah, but if we can just chop down a couple hundred more trees and subsidize a few more corporate boxes, it'll all work out.

RAB
We'll also have to take "values of culture (heritage, diversity, creativity and transmission of knowledge)" and hide them somewhere. If they ever got loose, boy -- would things get uncomfortable.

JG
I was thinking this morning, though, that our perpetual state of preferential lawlessness and economic pandering is, in many ways, not just honoring our cultural heritage but sustaining it. Was there ever a time in NA when that wasn't the dominant paradigm or that it was seriously challenged by a member of the political class?

RAB
That's a really good point. Just this morning I was chatting with an acquaintance, and we touched on this very phenomenon. Somewhere there's a successor to John "Guido" Mattingly, puppeteering behind the scenes; he or she controls Dickey and Gibson and Gahan, and the system purrs along as it always has. The best and brightest leave. The council takes public pride in all being from the same high school. The only idiot is me, for thinking there is something else there, when that something never actually appears.

Let's keep the spotlight on the civil rights FAIL perpetuated by Mike Pence and Indiana's Republicans.

But that's life in a one-party state.

EDITORIAL: Legislature, governor fail test of courage, at the Evansville Courier & Press

... With five weeks remaining in the short, non-budgetary session, the 2016 Legislature, without great leadership from the governor's office, has accomplished little. We acknowledge that, usually, there is a great rush of bills through Indianapolis in the final week, but beginning with civil rights legislation, it's disheartening what Gov. Mike Pence and the Legislature chose to not push through.

Once again, the simple act of assuring equal rights for all escaped our elected leaders and became a debate that reached the national stage — though, thanks goodness, not as much as last year's Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In an effort to appease both those who support civil rights and those who fear their religious beliefs would be infringed upon, nothing moved forward — which you sense, in this election year, is exactly what Gov. Pence had hoped.

Gahan the human rights mayor? Spare us, please.

It was never Jeff Gahan's idea to enable a human rights commission, but in the grand scheme of political maneuvering, there was sufficient support that he acquiesced, pausing only to be assured that he'd receive credit for the sham he at first opposed, and would extract payback chits from those duly assuaged, redeemable for bonded boondoggles down the road.

Consequently, New Albany was gifted with vintage Gahan intellectual infrastructure: An entity neutered and defanged at birth, suitable primarily for posturing and press releases. The sycophants were delighted, and so little of merit occurred (for once, actually by design) that a whole other entity (Southern Indiana Equality) was privately created.

If you can find anything in this story to suggest a vote to re-elect Jeff Gahan, please let me know. While you're pondering this, consider yet again the "human rights mayor's" abysmal record in matters such as ... well, human rights.

ON THE AVENUES: No more fear, Jeff.

In the one-party city, we'll be needing some human rights assistance.

Speaking politically, one-party states seldom relinquish their monopoly "rights" without a fight.

ON THE AVENUES: One-keg parties rarely work, either.

 ... Obviously, the very notion of a one-party state embraces the concentration of power within one sphere, according to a single set of guidelines, and with avenues of political participation effectively closed apart from reigning orthodoxy. In the absence of palpable opposition, the sole party devotes itself to maintaining its own entrenched bureaucracy, safe in the knowledge that governmental institutions merely mimic the party’s own time-honored levers, and cannot be detached either physically or metaphorically from the entrenched patronage of the party itself.

Or, in other words, much like political life in New Albany.

If you're wondering why an otherwise sensible person like Democratic Party chairman Adam Dickey would comment on social media to the effect that the Party loves and supports all its candidates equally, conveniently ignoring David White's primary election evidence to the contrary, and even after Dan Coffey spent much of 2015 publicly contradicting the Party's platform, behaving as an unreconstructed, homophobic nutcase and regarding Dickey's stewardship with palpable disdain, it's because Coffey is completely unprincipled and therefore useful to the maintenance of a one-party city.

If Jeff Gahan is Vito Corleone and Dickey poses as Tom Hagen, then Coffey serves as Luca Brasi. The only drawback to this analogy is that "The Godfather" was not a product of Walt Disney's studio.

As Dickey publicly whistles tunes from the musical "How to Succeed in Politics Without Really Trying," Coffey can be relied upon to plant stilettos in the backs of opponents, especially those within the Party itself -- like John Gonder, who should remember never to choose a chair facing the door.

Coffey occurs precisely because shift is not intended to happen, and that's why we must be pro-active and contact the Carter Center now.

Do election monitors charge by the hour? We can crowd-source their pay packets.

Checkpoints at cemeteries should do the trick ... right, Adam?

Our Goal

The Carter Center works globally to advance democratic elections and governance consistent with universal human rights.

What do Carter Center election observers do?

Election observers recognized as impartial and credible play a key role in shaping perceptions about the quality and legitimacy of electoral processes. To ensure a meaningful, nonpartisan role for its election observation activities, The Carter Center must be invited by a country's election authorities and welcomed by the major political parties.

Election observation missions start long before election day, with experts and long-term observers analyzing election laws, assessing voter education and registration, and evaluating fairness in campaigns. On election day, observers assess the casting and counting of ballots. In the days and weeks after the election, observers monitor the tabulation process, electoral dispute resolution processes, and the publication of final results.

Read more about our recent observation of elections in Nepal, Madagascar, Kenya, Mozambique, and Tunisia.

How can you help Southern Indiana Equality?

Thanks to Brad and Hannegan for their permission to reprint this e-mail. Please consider supporting Southern Indiana Equality with your time and money.

I'm delighted we have such an organization, and as mayor, I intend to properly animate the city's Human Rights Commission (re-established only in 2012) to serve as more than a line item on a defeated politician's CV.

I say this in part because (after all) I've been saying it since 2005, but also because there cannot be too many participants in this cause, as so eloquently outlined in the passages below, and local government must be a key actor in the advancement of human rights for all.

New Albany's Human Rights Commission and Southern Indiana Equality should serve as complementary mechanisms for doing the right things, for the right reasons. That's the way it will be, starting on January 1, 2016.

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Greetings from Southern Indiana Equality!

Thank you for your interest in our cause - your support is so important to us. Southern Indiana Equality is a newly formed, independent, local organization that works as part of a vibrant community to uphold and advance human rights for all. Southern Indiana Equality serves a 26 county coverage area, serving as a liaison between citizens and those entities responsible for upholding such rights.

We hope to empower people to realize their rights, while shedding light on those who are at risk and vulnerable on a multitude of fronts, including but not limited to: education, employment, public accommodations, and housing.

Southern Indiana Equality envisions a world where all people, regardless of race, color, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, gender, sexual orientation, age, genetic information, military service, or disability, are ensured equality and embraced as equal members of society in every regard.

I’d like to fill you in on some upcoming dates for Southern Indiana Equality; be on the lookout for emails in the coming month on how you can be involved. On September 27th, 2015, we will have an interactive booth stocked with resources at New Albany’s Indie Fest - check out event details at . We look forward to this opportunity to connect with the community and hope to have a day filled with meaningful conversations. Additionally, our annual meeting is coming up on October 1st, at 7:00 p.m., and we hope to have a large crowd assembled.

How can you help now? By helping us spread the word. Invite your Southern Indiana friends to visit and like our Facebook page. Forward this email to others and encourage them to get added to the email list. Come to Indie Fest and to the annual meeting and bring a friend (or five). Make a donation to our GoFundMe account to support us in raising the funds for the filings fees needed for our non-profit status. A non-profit status would enable us to pursue grant funding, empowering us to broaden our impact significantly.

We have a long road ahead of us, and the passion and commitment to embark on this journey with vigor. Thank you for your interest in walking alongside us.